Video conferencing systems are known in which an icon or thumbnail image of each of the participants is provided on a conferencing screen. Typically such icons are arranged in no particular order (for instance in order of joining the conference) which can make it difficult for a conference organiser to identify the next presenter or to change the presentation order.
This identification and prioritisation task can become much more difficult where the conference is a constituted meeting of many persons, for instance the AGM of a large distributed company. The mere placing on screen of the icons of those joining the meeting may require more screen space than is available, resulting in the exclusion of some icons from the screen. The problem of identifying a participant wishing to speak and organising them into the speaking order provides additional problems of advising each person who is already in the speaking order of any changes and keeping participants aware of any changes in the meeting process.
Further, there is a problem in joining a large number of persons into a video conference. While there is a single video feed supplied in general to all participants the actual source of this feed may be any one of the participants, and the complications of providing the bandwidth and signal processing of a sufficiently high standard to ensure full evidential quality recording of video and audio at a central server from all of the participants is such that the number of participants must be limited. Typically the limitation is from 30 to 80 participants, depending on the hardware and connection resources available.
The limitations largely arise because each incoming audio and video signal requires at least some processing before it can be merged into a common video and audio feed. Additional processing is required for supplementary signal treatment, such as removing a single participant's audio from the return feed to avoid echo and feedback problems.
While compression techniques and signal processing techniques are improving the extension of video conferencing to a very large number of remote attendees for a particular conference is currently not a realistic option, nevertheless there are conferences or meetings which have several thousand attendees and allowing these to be carried out as video conferences is a desirable aim.
Known systems go some way towards solving these problems. Among these are:
Adobe Connect® which provides central servers streaming video and audio to participants both local and remote. Remote participants may be served through remote servers working from forwarded “chunked” data which also return chunked data to the central servers. This tends to provide erratic performance for a remote active participant.
Infinite Web Conferencing which provides a cloud based solution to a specified 1000 participants allowing any of these to participate in a meeting.
Similar technology is proposed in U.S. application 2006/0168553 which discloses an Instant Messaging solution providing virtual channels between multiple users.
Neither of these technologies appear to solve the problem of connecting a very large number of persons to a meeting so that any one of them may actively participate in the meeting because edge to edge latency of the “cloud” typically places an upper limit on how many users may be interconnected at the edges of the cloud and still interact understandably with the remainder of the participants.
Therefore a need exists for a solution to the problem of creating a video conference between a large number of persons where each of the persons may optionally take part in the conference within the bounds of existing technologies.
The present invention provides a solution to this and other problems which offers advantages over the prior art or which will at least provide the public with a useful choice.
To this end it is an object of the invention to provide a method of presenting to a large number of meeting attendees a streamed session of meeting occurrences and allowing at least some of the attendees to provide input to the meeting.
The terms “meeting” and “conference” are used interchangeably within the specification with the inference that a “meeting” may be formally structured and recorded while a “conference” may not be.
The term “live stream” means the meeting feed of video and audio proceedings produced as the meeting output and issued as directly as possible.
The term “delayed stream” means a replicated version of the live stream, delayed by a time which is perceptible in a comparison of live and delayed streams.
The term “attendee” means a person who is receiving the live or delayed streams of the meeting.
The term “participant” means a person who can provide input to the meeting without appreciable delay. In practice this can only be an attendee who is receiving a live stream.
The terms “forwarded stream” and “replicated stream” are synonymous. Either infers that the stream is delayed with respect to a live stream.
All references, including any patents or patent applications cited in this specification are hereby incorporated by reference. No admission is made that any reference constitutes prior art. The discussion of the references states what their authors assert, and the applicants reserve the right to challenge the accuracy and pertinency of the cited documents. It will be clearly understood that, although a number of prior art publications are referred to herein; this reference does not constitute an admission that any of these documents form part of the common general knowledge in the art, in New Zealand or in any other country.
It is acknowledged that the term ‘comprise’ may, under varying jurisdictions, be attributed with either an exclusive or an inclusive meaning. For the purpose of this specification, and unless otherwise noted, the term ‘comprise’ shall have an inclusive meaning—i.e. that it will be taken to mean an inclusion of not only the listed components it directly references, but also other non-specified components or elements. This rationale will also be used when the term ‘comprised’ or ‘comprising’ is used in relation to one or more steps in a method or process.